Greetings,

Happy New Year! I always like New Years. It reminds me of starting school. I had a sense of beginning again. There's a sense of new possibilities. I don't know about you but I always feel hopeful and positive in beginning again. So here we are beginning again with a new year and a new topic to explore through practice. Many of you may not know this phrase "Transcendental Dependent Arising" but it is squarely in the Pali Cannon. I believe it was coined by Bhikkhu Bodhi, a highly acclaimed Western Theravada scholar. It represents the conditional nature of awakening. Mostly in Buddhism, we talk about the conditional nature of dukkha (suffering/dissatisfaction). It makes sense because our fundamental practice is the Four Noble Truths and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. These two practices represent the recognition of dukkha as the ground to our human existence and the meditative practice with this dukkha is the path to liberation.

Last year, we explored the Four Noble Truths. They represent the understanding of the relationship between dukkha, our clinging, letting go and the path in which all of this takes place. This year we are turning towards exploring the conditional nature of that letting go. It may seem like letting go is something you have to learn how to do but throughout this year you will hopefully you will begin to see that letting go happens on its own. It is conditional and arises out of particular causes. We, as practitioners, learn to create the conditions that set those causes in motion and let the natural aliveness of our practice carry us towards awakening. This is what the picture below represents to me. Causes and conditions are natural fractals. Fractals are repetitive patterns in nature. The pattern repeats itself over and over again regardless of how big or small. In this picture you can see the repetitive nature of the fractal of the succulent leaves. Some of them are bigger than others, but the pattern repeats itself regardless. There is no separation or selfing involved. Each succulent flower is the same fractal. Any new flower need not worry. They will grow in the same way as all the others because they are part of the causes and conditions that brought this succulent into being. The more you begin to see the fractal nature of dukkha and the fractal nature of awakening, the more you see or understand practice for what it is - right effort. We abandon arisen unskillfulness and cultivate unarisen skillfulness. At the same time, we prevent the arising of unarisen unskillfulness and sustain arisen skillfulness. This is it. There really isn't anything else about practice. We do this in a container of sacredness and compassion to keep us inspired.

In 2020, we spent the year exploring Dependent Origination, the conditional nature of dukkha. We looked at the 12 links that causes dukkha to arise over and over in our lives. Unfortunately we can't find the old blog posts. This year we are following this thread of conditionality by turning towards the conditional nature of that letting go. Letting go actually begins with dukkha. It takes a recognition of the presence of dukkha and an acceptance of that dukkha for the fractal of awakening to be set in motion. From that acceptance of dukkha, faith will arise. We don't make ourselves have faith. And we don't have to force faith to come into existence. The more we can accept the truth of dukkha being present and soften into it, the stronger our faith becomes. This is an important step that we will talk about more next month. The implications, however, of this is that we learn to see that practice has less to do with our willpower and more to do with our interest and curiosity.

From that faith, we set in motion the conditions that cause letting go to occur. There are a total of 12 links that start with dukkha. The remaining 10 links after faith create the conditions for letting go of our habit mind, habit energies, and habit actions. These habits are the conditional links that cause dukkha to exist in our lives. They are subconscious and hidden from view. We just feel the disruption, the dissatisfaction, and get stuck in judging, comparing and trying to fix that disruption and dissatisfaction. Dukkha is the starting point of liberation. It turns us from this impulsive judging, comparing and fixing towards softening and allowing. This softening and allowing is necessary for panna and karuna (wisdom and compassion) to arise. These two qualities will not assert themselves in a mind that is impulsively trapped in judging, comparing and fixing. We end up using our sense of self to get rid of the dukkha, not realizing that it is trapping us further into more dukkha. When we soften and allow the presence of dukkha, which is our reality, we enable our wisdom mind and natural tendency towards kindness to come forth. You may not think you have a strong wisdom mind or a natural capacity for kindness, but you do. It comes with the human body. It's not about you. Often we're just not quiet enough and patient enough to see this natural capacity. This year we are going to explore what it takes to get quiet and patient so we can begin to see this natural human capacity we have for awakening. The wisdom and compassion will enable us to recognize and appreciate the 12 links of Transcendental dependent arising.

I am totally stoked about it. I hope you are, too. If not, have faith. You may find you are equally stoked by July.

With a deep bow,
Tuere